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Sunday 23rd April 2017 SOSSA PELAGIC TRIP, KIAMA, NSW, AUSTRALIA.

Published on 27-04-2017 08:33 PM

Here's what was seen outside the harbour on the pelagic from Kiama on the MV Kato on Sunday 23 April 2017. The list uses the IOC Checklist v7.2 (2017) for taxonomy, nomenclature & order of species. Today’s list gives fairly conservative numbers, which are estimates for the commoner species. There's also a .jpg file from Google Earth showing our route.

Leaving Kiama Harbour at 07.30 hrs AEST we headed east out to the shelf edge at 34° 38’ 45” S; 151° 12’ 19” E, 31.7 km from the harbour in 280m+ waters, where we made the first of three stops of 15-50 mins along the shelf edge, looking for significant upwellings and associated birds. At each stopping point, we chummed and drifted SSW in the current, catching and banding Wedge-tailed and Flesh-footed Shearwaters. Our third stop and drift took us south to 34° 41’ 08” S; 151° 11’ 32” E, 30.5 km E of the harbour, at 11.45 hrs, at which point we turned back towards the shore, hoping to pick up a wider variety of species along the current lines further in. We made three further stops at points 25.2 km, 17 km and 3.31 km respectively E of the harbour, drifting and chumming 15-45 mins at each spot, without seeing further species. We arrived back in the harbour at 15.48 hrs.

Sea temperatures were around 24° offshore with very benign conditions; light winds and a <0.5m swell. Species diversity was significantly down on previous trips off Kiama this year, with a surprising complete absence of albatross species.

Species seen outside the harbour, maximum at any one time in brackets: